BBVA, a multinational Spanish banking group, is doing a radically new experiment with a 40 year old technology, the ATM. Today’s ATMs are very good ‘automated machines’ but the ‘teller’, the human element, is sorely missing and this has, over the years, lead to a dismal everyday experience for users. Instead of ATM, users only know AtM, good automated machines but not very good ‘tellers’.

Drawing inspiration from the work of the pioneers of User Experience, Apple, BBVA has taken it upon themselves to change today’s AtMs to ATMs, bringing back the right amount of human-ness into one of the most used devices in our lives.

This video shows off the ATM concept that BBVA, working with IDEO, have developed after 2 years of engineering.

The concept is chock-full of well-thought out ideas like the 90° suggested queue position which ensures that the ATM user always has the people next in queue in the corner of their vision, instead of today’s design where the people are standing in the blindspot of the ATM user. Another wonderful feature is the use of synchronized animated UI transitions that connect the virtual and the real worlds. For instance, when the ATM user has requested a cash withdrawal, the UI shows digital bills in the correct denomination and totalling the requested amount, drop down from the center of the screen and just as they touch the bottom of the screen, the ATM slot dispenses the bills using the exact same denomation shown on screen, thereby giving the impression that the digital bills made their way into the real world. Other things that stand out are the single-slot design that dispenses both bills and receipts using the same slot, and a massive touch-screen with no hardware keyboard – a design that mirrors the data-specific UI found in Apple’s iPhone and iPad which throws up a custom keyboard tailored specifically for the input field in focus thereby providing context to users on what kind of data the input field is expecting.

Apple’s Numbers spreadsheet app for the iPad showing off the data-specific UI. The same idea is used in BBVA-IDEO’s ATM concept.

The project has started off with 5 Pilot units that are observing and gathering initial feedback from users. The pilot phase feedback will be followed up by tweaking the systems before going for a wider rollout.